BBC Expert Condemns US Plan For After Iran Bombing Stops: 'There Are Huge Question Marks'

A BBC expert has condemned the “lack of clarity” coming from the White House on what happens after the US stops bombing Iran.

Jeremy Bowen, the corporation’s international affairs editor, said there were now “huge question marks” about what comes next as violence rips through the Middle East.

The US and Israel launched missile attacks on Iran at the weekend, killing the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior regime officials.

Donald Trump initially suggested that the aim of the military action was to replace the regime, which has run Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979, entirely.

But speaking on Radio 4′s Today programme, Bowen pointed out: “The regime is still there, it’s constructed to try to resist a moment like this. Will it survive? Well we’ll see in the next few weeks and months probably.

“Buildings are ruined, hundreds are dead – civilians as well as leaders – but I think what strikes me right now is the lack of clarity from the Americans about just what happens.

“There has been less talk in the last couple of days of replacing the regime out of Washington. They’re saying very little about what happens in Iran after they declare Iran is no longer a threat and they stop bombing.

“The current message appears to be that the day after is a matter for Iranians, not the Americans, whatever the consequences.

“This is how they seem to want to make it different from their interventions in, say, Iraq, where the mantra you heard all the time was if you break it, you’re responsible for it.

“Now they’re saying ‘it’s up to you. Iran is your country, we’re just going to do what we need to do to get rid of the people we see as threats’.

“So there are huge question marks about where this goes.”

Meanwhile, an ally of Trump has joined in the president’s criticism of Keir Starmer’s decision to initially block US fighter jets from using UK bases to launch its attacks.

The prime minister U-turned on Sunday night, saying America could use the bases to carry out “defensive” strikes on weapons storage depots and missile launch sites.

That has sparked a war of words between Trump and Starmer, with the president telling reporters: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Robert Wilkie, a former US undersecretary of defence, in the first Trump administration told Today: “I think there’s a genuine sadness on the part of the senior military leadership of the Pentagon that Britain’s power has receded as dramatically as it has.”